The busy week begins with reviews for a quartet of WWII films (via Warner Home Video) starring Errol Flynn, as he moved from swashbuckling adventure films to romances, westerns, dramas, and war actioners during the early forties.

The first film, Dive Bomber (1941), is really pre-WWII, but one senses the movie's psychological effect hard and fast: preparing the American moviegoing public for the inevitability of WWII - a message that happened to precede the bombing of Pearl Harbor by few months. Flynn plays a surgeon, and the movie's quite an involving drama, with suspenseful aerial scenes instead of gung ho combat sequences.

TCM's latest Spotlight series is on Flynn's wartime action films, and I've uploaded reviews of the first 3 of 5 films in this highly recommened boxed set: Flynn as an Aussie in the bombing run thriller Desperate Journey (1942), Flynn playing a Norwegian (!) anti-Nazi rebel in Edge of Darkness (1943), and Flynn playing a RCMP officer (!!) in Northern Pursuit(1943).

You know, he wasn't bad as a Canadian!

Coming shortly are the remaining two titles in the set, Flynn as a Frenchman (!!!) in Uncertain Glory (1944), and the thrilling action classic Objective, Burma! (1945).